GamerSushi Asks: Launch Day Frustrations

fallout-new-vegas bugs

It’s happened to all of us. We get home from work or school, tear the shrink wrapping off the box or boot up Steam, only to discover that the video game gods have different plans for us. Whether it’s a RAIDed video card melting inside of an improperly ventilated Alienware PC or Games for Windows Live just decided to take a day off (or even the dreaded Red Ring of Death), there are many malignant forces at work attempting to prevent you from playing your game.

The last sort of launch day shenanigans I can remember happened with Fallout 3, which needed to go through Games for Windows Live and just didn’t like the fact that I kept trying to sign into my Gamer Profile. I eventually got it to work, but at the cost of a day’s worth of Fallout. Recently, I’ve heard that New Vegas is pretty unstable, and has been giving users some grief when they try to load it through Steam.

I didn’t have any problems with New Vegas personally (except for my weapon clipping through my body in third-person view), but I was wondering if you guys had any launch-day horror stories to tell. Did your computer blue screen, or were you just unable to play your game? Any Xbox owners experience the RRoD, which always seems to come out of the woodwork on the launch of big games. I’ve never heard of a PlayStation crapping out on a new game, but I’d love to hear about it. Tell us your harrowing tale in the comments!

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mitch@gamersushi.com Twitter: @mi7ch Gamertag: Lubeius PSN ID: Lubeius SteamID: Mister_L Origin/EA:Lube182 Currently Playing: PUBG, Rainbow 6: Siege, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Total War: Warhammer 2

17 thoughts on “GamerSushi Asks: Launch Day Frustrations”

  1. Thankfully I haven’t had anything bad happen on me when I get a game. Maybe the Gaming Gods favour me? Except when they decide to ‘yellow-light-syndrome’ my PS3 :/

  2. I’ve had a little bit of slowdown on New Vegas, even though I could run FO3 totally maxed out. I’ve had to sacrifice a little looks for it to run smoother, but I’m sure they’ll hammer it out. Also, sometimes right at the end of dialogue, my FPS can drop to like 3, until I say “goodbye” to the npc. Kinda weird.

    Other than that, haven’t had any issues with it. Played for 3 or 4 hours yesterday and it was great. So happy to be back in the Fallout universe.

    Anyone try to play Caravan? I can’t figure out how the fuck that card game works for the life of me. “Oh, Card turned green! I can has here?” uugh.

  3. I’ve only played a couple hours of the ps3 version, but I’ve had no issues whatsoever. People complained about the console versions of Fallout 3 being buggy as well, but I only had a few cases of the game locking up on me in over 100 hours of gameplay, even with the notoriously buggy (on ps3, at least) expansions installed.

    I’m starting to think that some of these rampantly buggy games are the result of internet rumor mills. You know, a few people encounter glitches (which is going to happen in a game with as many moving parts as New Vegas no matter how much you test it), bitch about it on the message boards, and the next thing you know these isolated, almost random incidents become become the pillars of an internet-wide prosecution against the developers.

    In the case of New Vegas, people have been lining up to take shots at this game since it was announced that Obsidian would be the developer so you had to know that from the moment the first bug was reported, the internet would be ablaze with criticism. I’ve looked at a lot of the message boards and you don’t have to go more than two or three posts down to find a “Well, what did you expect from Obsidian” post from somebody who will oftentimes even admit that he hasn’t played the game.

    1. Zayven, I don’t doubt that these things are getting overblown by some crazies, but to blame claims of bugs on the “internetz” instead of the company that has a history of rushed and/or buggy games seems a little like burying our heads in the sand. Bethesda itself has even said a patch is incoming to deal with them. I doubt they would start work on a patch for bugs that don’t exist or happen to just be caused by rumor mill speculation.

      In terms of launch day frustrations, the closest thing I have is when the Halo 3 beta came out, and once I downloaded the update to play it, my 360 red-ringed. It was one of the saddest days of my life.

  4. Julez, I’m mystified by Caravan, too. It looks cool and all, but I would like to learn how to play it without having to wager half of my caps for the privilege.

  5. I’m not saying that the glitches don’t exist or that my admittedly limited experience with New Vegas is representative.

    Yes, I realize that there are lots of videos showing glitches so it would be foolish for me to claim that they don’t exist, which is why I did not dispute their existence in my previous post.

    What I was trying to say is that it seems to me that some people seem to be going out of their way to draw attention to the problems with the game. For the record, I’m NOT suggesting that they should stick their heads in the sand and do nothing; reporting bugs to Bethesda is the only way they will know about these problems and take measures to get them fixed. But pointing out a glitch in the hopes of getting it fixed and making “gotcha” videos to post on the internet to complain about the game are two different things.

    I realize that Obsidian has had troubles with bugs in the past (along with Bethesda), but their involvement with this game seems to have tainted many people’s opinion of it even before it came out in much the same way that some people still worry about Treyarch developing Black Ops rather than Infinity Ward.

    Anyway, I don’t want to make this into a big argument and I’m sorry that I brought it up in the first place. I won’t say anything else about it; I just wanted to clarify that I’m not denying the existence of bugs in the game, only that, in my personal and perhaps overly limited opinion, the extent of the game’s “glitchiness” is getting a little overblown.

    1. @lovetheladies

      That is one of the saddest things I’ve heard. Did you end up playing that day some other way, or did you have to wait several weeks?

      @Zayven

      Feel free to comment on it all you want. Sorry if I came across as snarky – admittedly I don’t understand the attitude of “it hasn’t happened to me so it’s just people taking shots at x developer”. I agree that these things get overblown time and time again, but when the developer(s) in question have a history of botched and buggy releases, I feel like we’ve got to at least attribute some weight to things people are saying. For Fallout: New Vegas, a game in which Obsidian already had the assets, so presumably had more time to polish the final product, I think this many bugs is actually staggering and inexcusable. I imagine the game is still great despite all of this (Mass Effect was a glitchy mess but one of my faves of this gen), so I’m not begrudging its fun factor, just its polish.

  6. My box red ringed on the day of mass effect 2. I had taken the day off of work so I was out of works pay, nothing to do but cry and curse microsoft

  7. @Eddy

    Yeah, I’ll admit that this lack of polish considering the circumstances is a legitimate concern. They did do a bit of tinkering with the game engine, though, so that’s probably where all these extra glitches are coming from. But yes, you would think that Obsidian would take some extra time on this given that they already have a stigma attached to their name for making buggy games.

    Anyway, back to the point.

    So nobody out there bought the infamous Pools of Radiance on day one? That game’s bugs were legendary and pretty much sank the developer, if I remember correctly. I seem to remember reading or hearing that it was so far behind schedule that they never even did a beta test.

    I also seem to recall the D&D: Temple of Elemental Evil game being real buggy. I think it was developed by Tripod. It crashed or locked up on me pretty much every half hour or so and had massive slowdown (in a turn based rpg); I was too frustrated to look into whether or not it was the game itself or something about by pc setup.

    Did anyone else have issues with the original Fable? That game crashed on me quite a bit, but I never knew if that was because the game was buggy or because the laser lens in my Xbox was dying a slow painful death (some games worked fine while others refused to play).

    1. I actually ran into a game-breaking glitch on Darksiders in the first 10 minutes of playing it. I turned it off and immediately sent it back to GameFly, haha.

  8. I ran out of clean underdrawers when I got New Vegas. That’s pretty much it. I’ve been lucky, but I’m always careful and paranoid when I get a new game.

  9. @ Zayven

    *not really a spoiler* If you help Ringo in Goodsprings, you can play Caravan with him and play for free, just don’t wager anything. I’ve played him probably 10 times and still can’t really figure out how to play. I won once, and I felt awesome.. but I don’t really get it haha.

    (back to thread) Also, while playing, Steam updated my game twice, so I think they are slowly patching things already. It’s great that the days of waiting for a +.1 patch and downloading 500MB are over. I love autoupdate!

  10. My first computer couldnt handle WoW after I had already signed up, more recently when I got home from the midnight release of Reach and popped it in, all I got was an “Open Tray”. That happened for a few hours until I was like Locke on top of the hatch just hitting and begging it. I was about to give up and “Play Halo Reach” came up… I got to play it(most of the firefight/multiplayer maps couldnt be loaded) for the next week, if I suffered the hours of opening and closing the tray and tapping the top, little did I know my Reach disc was slowly looking like I attacked it with sandpaper. Each time my xbox took longer to read a disc until it didnt at all.

  11. i remember the day Halo:Reach came out i brought it and had couldn’t play it for the entire day well worth the wait

  12. I have to admit that GameStop had a promotion for 50% off a used game (kane and lynch 2) if you pre-ordered a game, so I ordered Fallout New Vegas. I’ve never pre-ordered before. I thought it would arrive at my house the day it was released. I’ve been jonesing for it for weeks. but instead I find out they wait till the day it’s released, then ship it. So now everyone else is playing the game I want so badly, I’ve already paid full price for it, but I have to wait until USPS finally delivers, whenever the F that will be. FML. At least I got a good deal on the used game.

  13. @eddy well I had my oc so I was able to play on that but the amount of hype and excitement I’d had for me2 really crushed me in a way lol. I got my 360 back relatively quickly and borrowed a friends a few days later to play it so it wasn’t so bad.

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